


Sticks and Stones

by noplacespecial



Category: How I Met Your Mother
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-24
Updated: 2008-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-25 06:46:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1637246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noplacespecial/pseuds/noplacespecial
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-"The Fight"; I suppose you could look at it either as an alternate ending or as a missing scene.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sticks and Stones

**Author's Note:**

> MY GOD I LOVE THIS PAIRING!! Tried to focus on the "getting inside Barney's head" part of your request. Sorry it ended up so angsty - hope you enjoy!
> 
> Written for June

Robin glues herself to his side all evening - stroking his arm, playing with the cuff of his shirt. Not that he minds. Ted's shooting them suspicious looks, Lily's beaming, and Marshall's too busy being annoying and self-righteous, but Barney is barely able to register anything not directly related to Robin's proximity to him in the booth. When it becomes too much for him, and he can no longer stand the smell of her perfume teasing his senses, he slides across the vinyl and disappears out the front door. Rounding the corner and hiding down the alley for a smoke is his usual escape plan; therefore he should not be surprised when Robin finds him just five minutes later.

"Why are we out here?" she complains, wrapping her coat tighter around her. Barney politely doesn't point out that he never asked her to follow him; he's just pleased that she did. He offers her a cigarette that she gladly takes, slipping her hand into his pocket to borrow his lighter. After a few puffs, she turns towards him and eyes the bruised flesh of his face.

"Does it hurt?" she asks softly. Barney shrugs. It does.

"Just a little," he says nonchalantly. Robin watches him as she finishes her cigarette, dropping it to the ground and gracefully stubbing it out with the pointed toe of her heels. Barney's is still clutched in his fingers, only half-smoked. Robin reaches over to stroke his cheekbone, and he wishes that the pattern of smoke from his lips didn't so clearly reveal how shaky his breath is.

"Do you have any idea how hot you are right now?" she murmurs into his ear. Her fingernails scratch at the back of his neck and then her lips are on him, shoving him back against the cold brick. Barney drops his cigarette and immediately grabs her by the hips, drawing her closer.

He responds eagerly to Robin's advances, sliding his hands down to her ass to pull her even tighter against him as she winds her arms around his neck. He grows hard almost immediately, at this point an almost Pavlovian response to her presence, but it's she who grinds her pelvis against his to experience the full sensation of it. Barney utters a groan that spills from his mouth to hers, and she swallows it beneath her tongue as it strokes his with all the finesse of a bulldozer.

There is no affection in this desperate clinging to one another in the dark of the alley - Robin's sudden, over-the-top attraction to men with bruises and scars is quite clearly a thinly-veiled excuse to make this all seem okay. Barney frowns, finally thinking this through and knowing that in all likelihood, tomorrow they will pretend that it never happened. Again. This is what makes him pull back, see Robin's flushed and excited face melt into confusion and annoyance.

"Doug beat up all those guys in the alley, Ted and I faked it to get chicks," he blurts out. Robin's jaw drops, and she shuffles away from him slightly.

"But...I don't..." she stammers. The illusion finally broken, the only things he sees in her eyes now are anger and disappointment. "You lied to me," she accuses. "You lied to me to get me to sleep with you again." He nods, having no real reason to deny it at this point, and again politely leaves out the flaws in her logic, the readiness with which she played into his supposed deception. Like he could ever really force or trick Robin Scherbatsky into doing something she didn't want to do.

Barney takes another cigarette from the box in his pocket and lights it as she turns and leaves him alone in the alley, the nicotine doing little to calm the trembling in his legs.

When Barney was younger, he was tall and scrawny, an all-around weak and awkward-looking little boy. He was teased in class, his lunch money stolen daily on the playground. He put up with it until grade three, when James came home covered in dirt and scratches.

"What happened to you?!" their mother exclaimed. James grinned as she fussed over him, pulled off his dirty clothes and tried to wipe the blood from his wounds.

"Kenny Houseman's not gonna be bothering me anymore!" he crowed. Barney frowned.

"What did you do?" he asked.

"Punched his lights out!" James bragged, demonstrating the action with his left arm. Their mother clucked her disapproval and dragged him into the bathroom, grabbing for her cigarettes on the way.

It would be the last fight James was ever in. But three days later, Barney took his older brother's advice. He ended the day with two black eyes, a bloody nose, and a cut on his shin so deep that it ended up needing stitches. Their mother, unable to afford the medical bills, had wrapped the wound as tightly as possible without the aid of surgery. As a result, the flesh healed in the form of a raised, jagged pink scar running the length from his knee halfway to his toes. 

Barney has used it as a story-starter ever since. There are girls out there that have been told that he got it from a sky-diving accident, from getting attacked by a shark, from jumping out of a burning building. Robin was right about one thing: girls do find scars sexy.

He runs a finger over it now, hidden beneath his dress slacks. It has faded over the years, but is still visible enough to be impressive; even to the standards of a hockey-loving Canadian.

As Barney exhales the last of his cigarette, he swears he feels a twinge of phantom pain right at the site of the marred flesh.


End file.
